


A cool hand

by Prim_the_Amazing



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, Sickfic, being paid attention to and loved is alien and weird and please stop david
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 03:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11523999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: Max is not going to let these idiot bastards that he’s forced to spend time with every day find out that he’s sick. Who knows how they’d react? They’d probably find some way to turn it into some weird kind of contest, or experiment, orwhatever.Shenanigans would happen, he’s sure. He has not known a day of fucking peace since he was sent to this damn camp.The one who he’s most desperate not to let know about him being under the weather is the only one whose reaction he is sure of, however. David wouldfawn.Ugh, it made him shudder just to think about it.So he kept his shit tight under wraps.





	A cool hand

Max is not going to let these idiot bastards that he’s forced to spend time with every day find out that he’s sick. Who knows how they’d react? They’d probably find some way to turn it into some weird kind of contest, or experiment, or _whatever._ Shenanigans would happen, he’s sure. He has not known a day of fucking peace since he was sent to this damn camp.

The one who he’s most desperate not to let know about him being under the weather is the only one whose reaction he is sure of, however. David would _fawn._ Ugh, it made him shudder just to think about it.

So he kept his shit tight under wraps.

* * *

“Good mooorning, happy campers!” David said way too fucking loudly, accompanying the greeting with a strum of his guitar strings. Max winced, his head throbbing in time with the damned instrument.

David gasped softly. “Max, what’s the matter! Are you hurt?” David leaned down into his personal space to inspect his face intently.

“No, it’s just way too fucking early in the morning for this bullshit,” he said, leaning backwards with a disgusted expression. It felt wrong, downright unsettling even, to be scrutinized so closely, to be paid this much attention for just a little wince. He’d have to shout at the top of his lungs to get his parents to so much as look up from their phones to shoot him an annoyed glance, and not even that worked every time. “Speaking of which, where the fuck is my coffee? I’m starting to get a withdrawal induced headache.” Yeah, good excuse. The withdrawal might actually be contributing to how shitty he felt, he was groggy enough in the morning without going caffeine free on top of it all. He wasn’t _that_ sick. Yeah.

“Max,” David chided, slinging the guitar on its strap behind his back so he could settle a hand on his hip and point condescendingly up at the sky at the same time to help make his point. “You’re a growing young man and shouldn’t be drinking so much coffee! You’ll stunt your growth.” _Why are you so invested in my growth,_ Max didn’t ask. _By the time my voice breaks I’m probably never going to come back here again, my future has nothing to do with you._

“I don’t have time to listen to you bitch at me about my ‘dietary habits’ for the millionth time, _David._ Where’s my coffee!? I swear to god, I’ll find a way to sic Nurf on you!” Were his hands shaking? It was fine, that happened to people who went without coffee for too long. It was fine. He was fine.

“You should just tell me that he’s got cigarettes,” Nurf recommended.

“As if David smokes,” Harrison scoffed.

Nurf started shaking Harrison down for his nonexistent lunch money.

“Ummmm,” Neil said. “I miiiight know where you’re coffee is, Max.”

“Oh thank fuck,” he said. “I really can’t deal with this camp without _something_ in my veins. Where is it?”

“Now, first of all,” Neil edged away from him before continuing, “I think it’s important that you know that I did it for _science.”_

Max froze. Some of the dumbest shit Neil had ever pulled had been in the name of science. “Neil. What the fuck. Did you do. To my. _Coffee.”_

“She’s just always so energetic, I wondered what she would be like if I _added_ to that-- it was her idea! She was curious about how it tasted!”

“Wait, what?” David asked, dodging Nurf’s knife attacks with a fearfully clinging Harrison slung over his shoulder.

“Are you saying,” Max said. “That you gave my coffee to _Nikki?”_

“Uuuuuhhhhh.”

Gwen’s familiar shriek drifted over the clearing. _“DAVID CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT!”_

“That’s it, I’m not going to deal with a somehow even more hyperactive than usual Nikki without my coffee, I’m going back to my tent. This can be a quirky adventure for the side characters.” He smacked Space kid’s arm encouragingly as he walked past him. “This is your time to shine, kiddo.”

Thank fuck for the excuse, at least. He was starting to feel dizzy.

* * *

“Max?”

There was a span of time during which his parents thought wasting money on a babysitter wasn’t as bad as spending time with him. They’d drag him along to their meetings and business trips, where he’d look for any magazine that _wasn’t_ about fashion or interior decorating in the waiting room, or be left alone in a hotel room all day long to try and find a channel that played a language he understood on the television and taste test everything in the mini fridge, even the tiny bottles that really looked like they should contain something less disgusting.

“Max, I’m coming in, okay buddy?”

One time, his mom dragged him to a country, the name of which he couldn’t recall for the life of him, and he remembers just how vividly _humid_ it was. He hated it. For the entire time he was there, he was soaked with sweat. It felt like he was breathing in something heavier than air. He couldn’t sleep because it was too hot to be under a blanket but it felt too wrong to go without. It felt like _moving_ was harder, like there was more resistance somehow.

(And then he set fire to one of the hotel rooms and _helloooo_ baby sitters. But that was another story.)

“Hey, I hope I’m not disturbing-- have you already gone to bed?”

That’s how he feels right now. Humid and sweaty and heavy and gross, like he’s trapped underneath an intangible, inescapable weight. Which didn’t make sense because he was at Camp, and sure, it was a total shithole, but it was at least a shithole with decent weather. It was, like, the one positive thing it had going for it.

A cool hand lands on his forehead and he sighs and leans into it just the slightest bit, because large, sudden movements is too much for him right now. If he wasn’t already hopelessly limp he’d melt into his sleeping bag with relief.

“You’re burning up,” the cool hand said softly, hushed. Max squinted his eyes open to look at it and was met with the sight of David kneeling down over him, pale face all scrunched up with (it feels wrong) concern, worried green eyes fixed on him (he hadn’t even had to try to get him to look at him, had he done something wrong), that rare shade of red hair immediately identifying him even to Max’s slow, sleepy mind.

Speaking of burning.

“Don’t you have some fires to put out,” he mumbled.

“Nikki’s already had her crash, she’s fast asleep and the fire department’s already taken care of all the rest. Gwen volunteered to tie things up with them.”

“Oh shit, Gwen volunteered,” he slurred. “The fireman must be crazy hot.”

“Max,” David said. Max wished he’d look away, just a bit. Just how long could he possibly be interesting? “You’re sick.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” he says, because there’s no denying it at this point.

“Well, at least I brought you some liquid,” David said, and then raised a steaming coffee cup into his line of vision. “It was the whole reason I came here actually, you seemed so upset about not getting to drink the terrible stuff. It’s your body, I suppose. Although, maybe I shouldn’t give a sick kid coffee--?”

Max snatched the cup out of his counselor’s hands like an awful little goblin and started pounding it back. It didn’t matter if it burned on the way down, he could barely feel his mouth anyways.

“... Well, what’s done is done. I’m going to go and get you some water though, oh, and some lunch if you haven’t eaten since this morning, and maybe some blankets, and a thermometer, and you have to have some napkins--”

Max looked down into his half empty cup, running his strangely unburned tongue over his teeth. The liquid inside was suspiciously beige…

“David, did you put fucking milk into my coffee?”

“And a pinch of cinnamon,” he admitted. “Just because you’re drinking coffee doesn’t mean that it can’t taste good!”

Max groaned, looked at his shitty David made coffee, shrugged, downed the rest of it anyways, and then flopped back down into his sleeping bag. “Go away.”

“Right!” David said.

 _Thank god,_ Max thought.

“I’ll be back soon with all of the things you need.”

“No!” he said, except because of his stupid sick throat it came out way too quietly for it to matter.

* * *

He did not fall asleep without meaning to. He never does that. Every night is an hours long mental war with his brain to get it to shut up long enough to let him have juuust enough rest not to fucking die the next day, but certainly not enough to ever feel properly rested. He just… dozed off. A bit.

He’s not that fucking sick, okay?

The point is, one moment David’s just left, the next he blinks and there’s a napkin dispenser next to him, along with a bottle of water and sandwich on a plate just waiting for him. And David. Naturally.

“You are the _creepiest_ person I know hands down, you know that, right?” He thought that over for a moment. “Not counting the Quartermaster.”

“I took your temperature while you were asleep,” he said with a sunny smile. “And I’m happy to report that you’re well away from the danger zone! But you’re still very sick, so you’d better have a drink, Max.” And then he nudged the bottle of water closer to him and looked at him expectantly.

Max wanted to throw it at his stupid face just to be contrary, but he was actually pretty thirsty, so he just resentfully tore the cap off and started drinking.

“Do you need anything else? We have some aspirin, although not too much of it since that last counselor, and I’m not entirely sure about the quality either because Mister Campbell bought it from a man who ‘didn’t believe in expiration dates’, which I didn’t know was optional, but I’m sure Mister Campbell wouldn’t buy us bad merchandise--”

“Pass,” he said after he was done with his drinking. He was liable to just keep going and going and going otherwise. Fucking Campbell. He sat further up to eat his sandwich, and then the world was spinning and his hand was slipping and David’s hand was firmly placed between his shoulder blades, keeping him up. As if falling would end up in injury for him or something.

“Woah buddy, that’s a bad case of headrush you’ve got there! Take it slow, there’s no hurry.” The tent was still spinning so hard that he couldn’t focus on anything at all, and that was the only reason he ignored David’s infuriatingly dorky sincere (caring) smile. It didn’t make him uncomfortable. No one could make him uncomfortable, he could take anything.

“Leggo,” he said, and David carefully lowered him down and _no,_ he’d meant _let go,_ why did he always have to--

David placed his cool hand on his forehead again, and he couldn’t stop his eyes from closing even if he had the presence of mind to think of it. It was… (everything he’d ever wanted all the other times he’d been sick, it was reassuring, it was calming, it was)

David tsked. “I think you’ve gotten a little warmer. But that might just mean that it’s about to break! It’s always darkest before the sun rises.”

Max wondered how many times David had held his hand to his forehead while he was asleep, if it had contributed to how weirdly, unusually well rested he felt now. His throat constricted at the idea of someone thinking about him while he was quiet, asleep, not there to remind them of his existence. David had done all of this just… on his own. It was his idea.

“I really fucking hate you,” he said weakly.

“Language,” David scolded lightly, as if he hadn’t given up on that particular battle ages ago.

David started to move away and Max made an almost involuntary sound of protest. David instantly froze. Max squeezed his eyes shut at that. He hadn’t even tried. He didn’t even have to try, and he looked at him and listened to him and _paid attention_ to him anyways. It was weird. It was freakish and unnatural and--

“Max?”

“Just,” he said. “Just, just keep your hand there. You’re a cold blooded freak of nature. So. It feels okay, right now, I guess.”

_Just stay._

David listened to him without prompting. He tried to read between the lines without being pushed, which was something his parents had only ever done while checking over a contract.

He stayed. It was tolerable and nothing else.


End file.
